Collided Lives

1. Darkness

Mammals have more brain wrinkles than other animals. Us, humans we have the most. And some even believe they deepen or increase when we learn something. I know this because I've been observing lots of brain-scans lately. Well, actually the doctors do the observing and I just steal glances pretending to be listening to the nurse talking to me. To me the brain looks like an endless maze. A maze you can never get out. A complicated riddle. The mystery of who you were, who you are and who you could possibly become.

Hi! My name is Shahla Miller.  I've been abandoned in a maze and can't find my way out. Or in other words, I'm currently suffering from long-term amnesia. From the scars on my body and the things the doctors and my father-whom I can't even remember-keep telling me, I've been in a car accident or as they put it, I survived it.

There's not much anybody's telling me. All I know is that my mother's dead. Cancer! I know that. And I know what happened before it. I can almost remember everything before I moved to NewYork. What I can't remember is what happened after, after I arrived.

The neurologist said, there's possibility that my memory comes back. But from the look he gave his colleagues and a hushed conversation he had with my father, I know that's farfetched.

I ask my dad to give me an idea of what happened. He on the other hand thinks I've been through enough over the past couple of weeks and he thinks I should wait until I'm emotionally capable of handling it.

Even though I've got some damaged tissues in my brain, his words strike a nerve. "Do you have any idea how it feels to be sitting in a hospital room twenty four-seven with a blank in your brain and your imagination running wild to every place possible?Do you know what it feels like to want to think, to dream in your loneliness but your mind doesn't know where to take you? When it feels like you're living another person's life, and you don't even know what they like or what they believe in or what they enjoy to calm them? And their brain is stuck in your head and it's breaking your skull to get out because you don't know how to deal with it?" After I'm done, the cardiac monitor is showing really long lines. And I struggle to calm down, not wanting to cause an alarm and for the nurses to rush in.

I know my words had their effect on my dad and I see how vulnerable he looks. And to be honest, I don't feel much pain for him. Pity for a person in pain yes, but compassion and sympathy for the person I love is no where to be found. This is another thing that has been driving me crazy. My cold, numb heart. I know there has been damage done to my brain and not my heart. But with my mother gone there's really no one I remember that I cared much about.

My dad buries his face in his hands. And I wait patiently, knowing that this is the thing that can bring me from darkness into clarity. "Fine," I think I hear him say with his head still in his hands and then he looks me in the eyes and I know I wasn't mistaken. "Fine, you want to know? I'll tell you everything! But I have one condition."

I nod so fast that I feel an ache in my head but I ignore it. "I want you to wait until you're discharged from the hospital and then I'll let you know everything."

"But-" I object quickly.

He points a finger at me a cuts me off. "This is none-negotiable."

I don't give up that easily. "Even doctors believe that it's good for my memory to know what happened!"

"The doctors don't know what you've been through." He says through clipped teeth. I don't know why I  felt as if a great wave of pain washes over him or why he sounds so desperate. Whatever it is, it frightens me. But not frightened enough to make me change my mind about wanting wanting to know.

Realizing he isn't  going to change his mind I give up.

On the days that follow, I drive my doctors crazy by asking them again and again when are they going to let me go? I even get in a fight with one of them, telling him that his opinion isn't professional. After a while I begin to sound annoying to my own ears.